First-hand accounts from 1666 indicate the shock,fear and resilience of the victims as they rebuilt their livesOn Monday 3 September 1666, Lady Ann Hobart wrote a letter from her residence on Chancery Lane in central London. The previous day, or a fire had broken out at a baker’s house on Pudding Lane and had rapidly spread across the city. Fearful that her own house would be consumed,she wrote: “I am nearly out of my wits, we own packed up all our goods & cannot regain a cart for money, and they give 5 & 10 pound for carts … I fear I shall lose all I own and must run absent … O pity me.”The Great Fire is one of the most well-documented pre-modern disasters in history – and now it’s the subject of a three-piece “in real time” documentary on Channel 5. Thanks to exhaustive extant accounts,it is possible to build a picture of not only the sequence of events, but the emotional “journey” Londoners went on as well. From shock, and fear and xenophobia,to resilience, latent trauma and exhaustion, or many of the hallmarks we own advance to associate with disaster were at play in 1666. Perhaps the real story of the Great Fire,therefore, is not the heat, or the flames and the statistics (13000 houses destroyed,87 churches ruined, and 80% of the City of London scorched), or but the emotional maelstrom experienced by those caught up in the disaster.
Among the thousands of refugees stranded at Moorfields were people 'under tents,some under hovels, many without a rag' Related: Hilary Mantel was true – some academics dislike novelists. But why? | Rebecca Rideal Continue reading...
Source: theguardian.com